The Tower Review - The Prime Directive?

[Vuen]

I can certainly understand someone who does this stuff in their free time not wanting to subject themselves to the berating and ranting that Ms. Fetter has had to endure over her opinions regarding The Tower.

This is the part I don't get about you guys. A review is supposed to be impartial and unbiased. It shouldn't be her opinion in the first place. The only reason you seem to think it's fair for her to write about her opinion is because you share it.

Even if that were the case, most if not all of what I posted had nothing to do with her opinion. I didn't quote her opinions, I quoted stuff she got flat out wrong. For example, she complained that the team didn't see the tower from the puddle jumper, when they very obviously didn't even come in a puddle jumper. That has nothing to do with opinion.

Some of my favorite episodes have been given very bad reviews on Gateworld, and yet I still agree with these reviews. That's just because my opinion about what I find important and unimportant, or entertaining and not entertaining, is different than the reviewer; I agree completely with their complaints, but I don't find them as detrimental to the episode. She can write a bad review if she likes, but she needs to get her facts straight.

[Darren]

This is the part I don't get about you guys. A review is supposed to be impartial and unbiased. It shouldn't be her opinion in the first place.

To clarify, this is not the case with episode reviews at GateWorld. They are quite expliticly opinion pieces, and as such are as "partial" and "biased" as the average human being.

They are to be written fairly, but without opinion there would be nothing to say beyond the summary that we already publish elsewhere on the site.

[Cory Holmes]

I was surprised that Weir didn't verbally tear into Shepphard when he got back to Atlantis for his James T. Kirk way of doing things.

That's because Weir is obviously Sheppard's obligatory het-ship-to-be. Weir has always allowed Sheppard to get away with virtually anything in S2, and it's really grating on my nerves. Hot Zone is a perfect example of what should be happening on the show: people making decisions and then living with the consequences. Trinity also dabbled in this, but that has never been touched on since then.

I really miss the inter-personal conflict that was sprinkled throughout the first season: Sumner vs Sheppard, Kavanaugh vs Weir, Teyla vs Bates... it all struck me as people reacting to being under tremendous stress and accidentally losing it, as people are wont to do.

Season 2 has seen the arrival of Caldwell, who has added to that dynamic nicely... but that's it. For the rest of the season there has been very, very little else of that. Bates is gone, Kavanaugh was brought back for one episode, and Seppard/Weir is being clobbered into our skulls on almost every turn.

Anyone here remember The Lowdown that was on before Atlantis premiered? Pierre Bernard called it right from the start when he asked if Weir was ever going to battle Telya to the death over Sheppard. He knew that Shep/Weir was the expected pairing and that nobody could avoid the cliche. Unfortunatly both Stargates are very unoriginal when it comes to things like this and it only makes the shows harder to watch.

[Madeleine]

This is the part I don't get about you guys. A review is supposed to be impartial and unbiased. It shouldn't be her opinion in the first place.

A thing which is impartial and unbiased is called a 'synopsis'. A 'review' is supposed to be opinion-based.

[AGateFan]

This is the part I don't get about you guys. A review is supposed to be impartial and unbiased. It shouldn't be her opinion in the first place. The only reason you seem to think it's fair for her to write about her opinion is because you share it.

Even if that were the case, most if not all of what I posted had nothing to do with her opinion. I didn't quote her opinions, I quoted stuff she got flat out wrong. For example, she complained that the team didn't see the tower from the puddle jumper, when they very obviously didn't even come in a puddle jumper. That has nothing to do with opinion.

Some of my favorite episodes have been given very bad reviews on Gateworld, and yet I still agree with these reviews. That's just because my opinion about what I find important and unimportant, or entertaining and not entertaining, is different than the reviewer; I agree completely with their complaints, but I don't find them as detrimental to the episode. She can write a bad review if she likes, but she needs to get her facts straight.

All review is opinion. And if this one can be retracted because some people didn’t like it. Well then I guess we can just start e-mailing getting all of the reviews retracted. Weren't a lot of people upset over the RE review or was that CD... were those retracted. How about a review where 4 stars are given for no other reason then a Stargate fan did the review.

Reviews are opinion pieces as Madeleine_W said an complete objective outline of the story is a synopsis.

[ShadowMaat]

This whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. Today the reviews, tomorrow the board? Not gonna be much room left for me if negative, "unfair" opinions aren't allowed.

[Commander Ivanova]

This whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. Today the reviews, tomorrow the board? Not gonna be much room left for me if negative, "unfair" opinions aren't allowed.

Quite, what happened to rational, intelligent debate? Shouting down people who don't share your views is not what these forums should be about.

[Piratejenna]

This whole thing has left a bad taste in my mouth. Today the reviews, tomorrow the board? Not gonna be much room left for me if negative, "unfair" opinions aren't allowed.

I'm no fan of negativity, but I have to agree with you. I haven't seen the episode, but I looked at the review to see what all the fuss was about, and I thought it was well-written and amusing, which is exactly what a review should be. It's understood in showbiz that reviews are opinion, and often strongly stated in order to provoke discussion. That's what a good reviewer should be doing! The only 'bad review' is a boring review (or maybe an illiterate one).

[buzlighty1]

The tower i have to say was perhaps the worst episode of Atlantis to date. The review was pretty good considering the episode was very bad.

[ShadowMaat]

If you ask me, the review was better than the ep itself.

[Vuen]

A thing which is impartial and unbiased is called a 'synopsis'. A 'review' is supposed to be opinion-based.

Okay, granted. But as Darren said they should be written fairly; they should above all be factually correct. I often don't agree with episode reviews, but that's just it, I can disagree. With Sharon's review my reaction was not "I disagree", it was "That's just plain not true."

Regardless of whether or not you guys agree with the review, doesn't it bother you the amount of stuff she wrote, like the ZPM thing or the jumper thing, that was just outright false?

[Mattathias2.0]

Prime Directive?

Well... There were dozens of times where SG-1 interacted with lesser-developed cultures (Abydonians (movie and pilot!), Tribes of Unas, Caledonians, Rand, etc).

Was every instance a success? No.

Was every instance a failure? No.

The ultimate truth is that you will definately meet up with atleast one lesser-advanced culture at some point regardless of what galaxy you are in.

So what does this mean? The Prime Directive is meaningless and useless in Stargate... Infact, the basis of the series is completely against it to begin with (Abydonians).

Mattathias

[AGateFan]

Prime Directive?

Well... There were dozens of times where SG-1 interacted with lesser-developed cultures (Abydonians (movie and pilot!), Tribes of Unas, Caledonians, Rand, etc).

Was every instance a success? No.

Was every instance a failure? No.

The ultimate truth is that you will definately meet up with atleast one lesser-advanced culture at some point regardless of what galaxy you are in.

So what does this mean? The Prime Directive is meaningless and useless in Stargate... Infact, the basis of the series is completely against it to begin with (Abydonians).

Mattathias

Other more advanced races use it with us.... maybe thats a clue we should implement it ourselves.

[ShadowMaat]

The Tollans had a Prime Directive of sorts, didn't they? They wouldn't hand over their tech to us. The Asgard have similar inhibition rules as well. In fact, they impersonated gods on some worlds because they knew those cultures couldn't cope with the truth. The Ascended Ancients have a strict non-interference policy, too.

[ToasterOnFire]

I can only hope that the review was pulled only to change any "factual" inconsistencies and that it returns with the same snarky, thumbs DOWN review. Tower fully deserved it, IMO.